Press Skeptical of Bush's Administration

George W. Bush was still in the “honeymoon” phase of his presidency and his relationship with the press when 9/11 occurred. Thereafter it has been an unspoken rule to not criticize the president because of a national crisis. Thus we have watched with interest as the press has ignored or soft pedaled mistakes, poor policies and outright deceptions on the part of this administration. Any other President, including his father, would not have gotten away with such a “light touch” by the press.

But in recent weeks there has been a gradual change of attitude. It seemed to start with Bush’s rigid policy of only allowing 2 questions from the entire U.S. press corps while with foreign leaders. In Africa, much of the American reporters simply boycotted the press conferences, because they knew they wouldn’t be able to ask a question anyway.

Norman Soloman, co-author of TARGET IRAQ; WHAT THE NEWS MEDIA DIDN’T TELL YOU recently pointed out that even NPR news in America has failed to report stories of U.S. government duplicities in Iraq in spite of the fact that BBC exposed and documented repeated deceptions by U.S. leaders. Time Magazine wrote a cover called: “Untruth and Consequences: How Flawed Was the Case for Going to War Against Saddam?” Editor and Publisher magazine’s editor Greg Mitchell recently documented that U.S. reporting of American deaths in Iraq are understated substantially. Matt Miller with Tribune Media Services recently wrote an article about the “GOP’s honesty deficit”.

He wrote and I emphasize it here: “IT’S TIME FOR EDITORS AND PRODUCERS TO HAMMER HOME SOME BASIC CIVIC FACTS” AND THEN SAID “LAYING OUT THE FACTS THAT SHOW THAT BUSH’S POSITIONS ARE AN OBVIOUS HOAX.”

Those who study economics realize that much of the rhetoric out of Washington these days is sheer economic fantasy. Cutting taxes while increasing spending during deep recession, while 2.500,000 Americans have lost jobs is no way to run an economy…nor is it honest to understate the cost of a war (fought on the basis of a lie) and to hide the Billions in cost and how much taxes will have to be increased to pay for this macho adventure. The press is finally picking up on this. Bob Herbert of the NEW YORK TIMES wrote on August 11, 2003, that “Credibility is the Bush Administration’s Achilles’ heel….this is an administration that is particularly sensitive to light. It prefers to do business behind closed doors, with curtains and shades drawn.”

Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus of the WASHINGTON POST wrote on August 10, 2003 that “As evidence waned, the U.S. escalated Iraq claims, and assertions about Saddam Hussein’s nuclear ambitions were based on weak evidence that grew even weaker.” They pointed out that even though the President was informed of the lack of proof that he continued to give the American people a false impression of the threat of Iraq.

I visited with U.S. Marine at a barbeque restaurant yesterday. He was tall, muscular, and ready to fight for the ideals of the United States. Yet, he has friends in Iraq, who feel like being posted in Iraq is like a trophy hunt, with American soldiers as the trophies. Every American boy over there is a target of people who only want to “kill an American”. A question Americans should consider is: “Are we being fair when we put our young boys in that kind of position, making them targets, over a war based upon lies?”

The role of the press is to report truth objectively. It appears that now, after nearly 3 years that the press if finally beginning to make Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft accountable for their contradictions, false statements and leaps of logic. It is high time.